“You’ve changed, brother.”
“Have I?”
Or was he just the man he’d always meant to be, but got lost for a decade?
That’s how he saw it. Fate had put him back on his chosen path, finally.
And no bozo, who had grandeur for threats, was gonna fuck with that.
“I like this look on you,” Primo said, then went back into hacker mode, mostly ignoring Splice while he muttered to himself, hunched over his keyboard.
“Ah, that was smart, fucknut.” He said, tapping. A lot of code was on the screen, and even if he had been waterboarded, Splice couldn’t have explained what it all meant. “Okay, let me pull the metadata. Got it..., ahh. That’s okay, I can trace the VoIP routes.”
Primo kept talking to himself, looking as if he were having a great time. It was more than an hour when Splice looked at the time again.
“I’m gonna exploit the telecom’s vulnerabilities, go through their back door. Shhh, no telling,” he said over his shoulder, smirking.
What a crazy madman, Splice thought, chuckling.
There was no firewall Primo couldn’t manipulate.
The club had missed his skills for the years he was locked up. And to think he was self-taught was a crazy miracle. Primo had been one of those genius students. The story of how he landed his ass with the MC was a good one, and a woman had been at the heart of it, naturally, but it wasn’t Splice’s story to tell.
He knew the MC was lucky to have Primo as a brother rather than an enemy.
“Getting closer.” He said, tapping the keys, “I think it came from somewhere local, Splice. Are you sure you can’t place an enemy?”
“I’ve thought about it backward and forward; no one stands out. And the Riot Brothers are dumb as fuck; it’s not their calling card.”
More tapping. “Give me thirty seconds. That’s it, you slippery bastard, daddy’s gonna catch you.”
Daddy? For fuck’s sake, Primo was a crazy bastard.
“Ahhh, clever.” He repeated. “This yokel used several IPs bouncing all around Utah from different signal towers. He’s a genius like me, but come on, who is like me, huh?” he bragged. “Or he has help. Which, not gonna bullshit, my brother, that’s scarier, because it means it’s more than some loser using a burner phone to make some scary calls to extort some scam payout.”
Splice’s jaw was hurting from how tightly he was grinding his back molars, eager to have a name, a face he could pummel into ground beef.
“It’s not just an ordinary burner,” Primo explained, “it’s like the phone number is wearing a mask and I have to peel back layers to see the real culprit. This is some Scooby-Doo mask reveal shit.” He half-laughed. “Hang tight, I’ve got it. I got you, little bitch boy,” he told the screen. “Daddy doesn’t play, does he?”
The daddy shit again. Splice rolled his eyes but let his brother work his magic.
“Oh, you little bitch!” he spat. “The telecom company kicked my ass from their firewalls, shit, I thought I’d have longer. Don’t worry,” he said to Splice, or was speaking to himself; Splice didn’t know. “I can slip in another way.”
And then Primo put in earbuds and started talking to someone. Splice couldn’t hear that side of the conversation, but knew it was all tech speak because he didn’t understand a word of it.
“It’s black-walled,” Primo said. “Nah, they had it burned down. Yeah, yeah, I see it, fuck yeah, little bitch can’t keep me out for long. I should leave a fucking virus as a parting gift,” he laughed. “Thanks for intercepting the traffic, Echo. I owe you a beer,” Primo laughed, then added, “yeah, more than a beer, got it. Hit me up if you ever need anything,” he ended the virtual call.
“Who was that?” Splice asked, curious, since they didn’t have an Echo in their connections, as far as he could remember, not in the club, either.
“Echo.”
“I gathered that much, numbskull. Who is he?”
“Someone on my network who just helped me slip through red lines to get you this.” He tapped a finger to the screen.
A phone number with a local area code.
“Put it in your phone and check if a contact comes up,” Primo advised.
